


Mullet Muscle Memory

by BuzzCat



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Weirdmageddon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 12:07:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15605940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuzzCat/pseuds/BuzzCat
Summary: Mabel and Dipper are leaving in a week, and Mabel wanted to make sure Stan remembered one of her favorite rituals they had: late-night hair combing. What do you know, that mullet was good for something after all.





	Mullet Muscle Memory

Mabel stood at the top of the stairs, debating. She really hadn’t debated before Weirdmageddon, at least not as much. She’d debate which sweater to wear, of course. That was essential. But debating about whether or not her family wanted to see her, that was a new question. Why would she ever debate about that? Of course they wanted to see her! It’d be silly if they didn’t!

But then, Stan had lost his memories and sometimes she didn’t know if he wanted to see her, if he even remembered her. Oh sure, things were coming back just fine; between his family and the scrapbook, Stan was remembering more and more every day. But even still, it sometimes took him a second. Mabel would walk into a room and when he saw her there was a split second where she could tell he didn’t remember her. Each time made Mabel’s heart clutch in her chest, the way those heroines would clutch their pearls in the old lady shows Stan pretended not to like. It made Mabel’s heart stop and sometimes she had to try not to cry; that just made things worse.

But they were leaving soon. She and Dipper both knew the summer was drawing to a rapid close; they’d be gone by the end of the week. Mabel couldn’t leave without making sure that Stan remembered this.

Mind made up, Mabel slowly walked down the stairs, careful to step on every squeaky board so Stan would know she was coming (they’d all learned their lesson about sneaking up on Stan when he almost decked Ford for coming around a dark corner too quickly). By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, Stan was already waiting for her. Mabel met his eyes and for a flash, she knew Stan didn’t know her. Then everything booted up right in that old man brain of his and he smiled at her,

“Hey pumpkin. What are you doing up so late?”

“I wanted to ask you something,” Mabel said quietly. She’d forgotten that it was so late; Dipper had been falling asleep early and waking up to nightmares often enough that her measure of oh-Dipper’s-asleep-it-must-be-late had been thrown off. Mabel moved her hands from behind her back, revealing a comb in her hand, “Would you comb my hair?”

“What?” Stan asked. Mabel gave him a second, waiting to see if anything would click. When he still looked confused, Mabel swallowed a sad sigh and explained,

“It’s just something you used to do. Back when you were younger, you had this mullet and got really good at combing out all the snarls without hurting. I can’t do it right; whenever I try to comb my hair all nicely it just hurts and Dipper’s even worse at it. You used to be able to comb it without making it hurt.”

“Oh,” answered Stan shakily. He rubbed at the back of his neck, “I mean, I don’t really remember the mullet, so I, uh, don’t know if I remember how to comb hair nicely.”

“Could you try? Please?” Mabel asked. She gave him the cute eyes he’d never been able to say no to and sure enough, Stan folded.

“Alright, I’ll give it a shot. Come up here.”

Mabel hopped onto his lap, turning so that he faced her hair. It really had gotten snarled up badly; she hadn’t been able to get it smooth and straightened out since Weirdmageddon. No matter how she tried to do it herself, it always seemed to pull and tear at her scalp until Mabel just gave the whole thing up for a lost cause.

She sat on Stan’s lap, waiting. She could be patient; she knew Stan would be able to do it just fine. After all, Dipper had explained about muscle memory and everything. Stan knew how to do it then, he’d know how to do it now. She just had to wait for him to realize that he knew how to do it.

After what felt like forever, she felt the comb start on her hair, starting at the very bottom of the strands and working in small section to puzzle apart the snarled strands.

Mabel took a deep breath as the memories of the summer washed over her. Lots of nights, when she couldn’t sleep, she’d come downstairs and make hot chocolate. Sometimes, if Grunkle Stan was still awake, she’d ask him to comb her hair. It always calmed her down after a nightmare or set to rest buzzing thoughts of the next day’s activities. She thought that maybe it helped him too; he always went sort of quiet when he combed it, like he was thinking about something else entirely. Which was okay, this was one of the few times in which Mabel didn’t really want to talk much. Late-night hair combing was for quiet thinking and relaxing, not scheming and laughing. Sometimes, when Mabel got too deep into the quiet thinking aspect of it, she’d fall asleep in Stan’s lap. On those nights, she always woke up tucked into bed with hair that was soft and snarl-free.

Tonight felt different. Stan was nervous; Mabel could tell from the way that he seemed to be frozen beneath her. The only thing moving was his hands as they slowly made order from the chaos that was Mabel’s hair. Maybe he didn’t remember how hair-combing was supposed to work.

“It’s okay for us not to talk, you know,” Mabel said into the quiet of the living room, “We usually don’t. You just kind of comb my hair and think and I sit here and think and—”

“—sometimes you fall asleep and make my old man bones carry you upstairs,” Stan finished for her. Mabel smiled, even though she knew he couldn’t see.

“Yeah, that happens sometimes too.”

“Personally, I think this is all a ploy because you just like being carried upstairs,” Stan mumbled. He didn’t notice his movements becoming more confident and routine, but Mabel did. She made no comment on it, instead replying,

“Yep! All of this is a master scheme. You’ve figured it out.”

“Hmph,” Mabel could almost hear him smiling when he muttered under his breath, “that’s my girl.”

As the comb slowly worked its way through the rest of Mabel’s hair, his movements became as sure and gentle as they’d been last week before everything happened and Stan seemed to relax behind her. Mabel smiled and let her eyelids slowly start to droop shut.

 

Stan kept combing Mabel’s hair, even after he suspected she had somehow managed to fall asleep sitting up. It felt familiar to do this for his great-niece.

The familiarity of things that Stan was only just rediscovering was common in Stan’s life now, but this felt familiar in a different way. The kids felt familiar every day when he saw them, but it was familiar in a way that was stressful. Even if there were moments he didn’t remember them, he always remembered that he didn’t want to disappoint them. When he couldn’t remember, he knew they knew and it hurt him to know that it hurt them. Remembering a lot of things that felt familiar was stressful.

But this? Combing hair? This felt familiar in a different, almost homey way. His hands knew what to do, like with magic tricks he didn’t remember learning. He didn’t have to think hard and scramble for the right words or the right inflection. Hell, there were no words at all for this particular ritual of his and Mabel’s (possibly their only interaction that didn’t involve words). All he had to do was comb hair. And the strange thing was, even that brought back memories.

He remembered combing his own mullet, hair that was staticky and dry in the Arizona heat. He remembered combing someone else’s hair, though that hair was dark and straight, unlike his and Mabel’s mess of brown curls. Something told him that the dark hair might have been his mother’s, a way he helped her when she was busy on a call. Stan also had the distinct feeling that he’d even combed Wendy’s hair at some point in time (though he was pretty sure he’d only done that because she had broken both her arms while climbing trees and her dad just didn’t have the patience for it).

He remembered combing Mabel’s hair throughout the summer. He remembered the times Mabel had come downstairs and would talk about a nightmare while he combed her hair. He remembered other times she’d come downstairs and she’d talk through things that were bothering her, Gideon and his pushing and her friends and how nice they were. Of course, it was far more common that they sat there in silence, but it was nice sometimes to get this unobscured look at his niece’s life. After the first month of summer, he’d started hanging out in the living room an extra hour after the kids went to bed before working on the portal, just in case Mabel needed him.

Stan was pulled from his memories at a soft sound in front of him. Mabel was snoring. He smiled and gently pushed her off his lap, only waking her up enough that she stood on her own feet while he stood up himself. Then, he picked her up and carried her up to the attic. It was slow-going, between trying to avoid the creaky stairs and trying to coax his own creaky bones into carrying a thirteen-year-old upstairs, but eventually he pushed open the door to the twin’s room and gently deposited Mabel in her bed. She grabbed one of her various stuffed animals and pulled it close, saying sleepily,

“G’night Grunkle Stan.”

He smoothed her tangle-free hair out of her face and smiled a smile even he knew looked mushy and sentimental, “Goodnight sweetie.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've been filling a lot of prompts lately and this isn't anything someone prompted, I just wrote it because it makes me happy.


End file.
